Remember those nice phrases about American history that you were taught in school like "Give me freedom or give me death;" "My freedom is not for sale:" "It’s better to let ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer?" Well, you can forget about them because today they are not relevant.

While America dictates to the world about freedom and justice, it is estimated that there are thousands of totally innocent people languishing in American prisons out of the 2.2 million or so people held there. The lawyers know it, the judges know it, the DAs know it and certainly the president knows it yet they appear not to care and certainly not to intend to do anything about it.

How can this happen? Well, unless you or someone you love has been mixed up in the justice system, you probably don’t care. When you see the police arresting someone on TV does it ever enter your mind that they may have the wrong man? Of course not. You will tell all your friends something like "Hey they caught the rapist who attacked that young girl."

A comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated, suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today. Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor, has calculated that 2.3 percent of all prisoners sentenced to death between 1973 and 1989 have been exonerated and freed. His research suggests that the vast majority in fact did not commit the crimes and an unknown number of innocents have not yet been exonerated.

So how does this happen? There are many reasons. One of the main ones is money. Without that a suspect is unable to hire the best lawyer or investigators while the prosecution has none of these restrictions. While the Constitution guarantees that "A lawyer will be provided," these so-called Public Defenders often have never been to trial and their only purpose is to get the accused to plead guilty. To those in the know, they are referred to as Public Pretenders or Pubic Defenders.

Then there are the "Expert witnesses." It is easy to get two experts to claim the exact opposites of each other if you have the funds to do so. Joyce Gilchrist was for 20 years one of those expert police chemists. Often, her testimony in 3,000 criminal cases meant the difference between innocence and guilt. A preliminary FBI investigation found that in at least five cases that ended with convictions, Gilchrist testified "beyond the acceptable limits of forensic science" and that Gilchrist misrepresented hair and fiber analysis in court to get convictions. Now authorities are reexamining 1,448 cases that Gilchrist worked on including 12 death penalty convictions. But in 11 cases, the defendants have already been executed -- including Marilyn Plantz, despite the recent revelations about Gilchrist’s shoddy performance. A study by Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, showed that flawed or corrupt testimony by scientific "experts" (about hair, blood types, and the like) figured in 55 percent of false convictions.

Now let’s talk about the attitude of the district attorneys who are sworn to uphold the Constitution. In actual fact, they are not concerned with truth or justice but rather with convictions. If they can claim a high percentage of these, then they can convince the unthinking public that they are fighting crime and so get reelected. They will try to resist the reopening of cases where new evidence is presented, DNA testing or the vacation of sentences to those convicted and then found to be innocent.

Entrapment. It used to be illegal for the government to set up people for arrest but not anymore. If one has "The willingness and capability," he can be set up even if he had absolutely no intention of breaking the law. The DEA uses this system regularly. For instance they target someone and offer them huge sums of money if they can introduce somebody who will sell drugs to them and then convict the target of conspiracy.

Informants. When someone is arrested for a crime, the government often informs them that their offense will be forgiven if they name some other people and give evidence against them. This evidence is known as "Hearsay," but is now accepted in court. Doesn’t matter if the named people are completely innocent, based solely on the word of the informant, they can be arrested and convicted.

Erroneous identifications. This happens most often with African Americans. Many white people will say that many blacks all look the same to them. Often, the police will give subtle hints to get their suspect identified. In investigating 209 people convicted of crimes from 1989 to 2003 who were later exonerated by DNA and other evidence, 69% were wrongly identified by witnesses.

Plea bargain. In order to save the cost of a trial and ensure a conviction, the prosecutors will usually offer the accused a plea bargain. Doesn’t matter whether they are guilty or not, it will be explained to them for instance that they are facing a 20 year sentence if convicted but, if the plead guilty the prosecution will ask for two years only. Their appointed attorney will tell them that they have little hope of winning as the juries usually believe the prosecution, so they would be better off just doing the two years and forgetting it.

Jurors. Most people selected for jury duty have never done it before. They are unaware of the games played by the prosecutors and also of their rights. For instance, they can find the accused not guilty in spite of the facts as, "The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy".( Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay). The jurors will never hear this explained to them.

False confessions. The police will use any trick to get a confession out of a suspect, regardless of the truth. Some suspects are so frightened by them that they will agree to anything just to stop the abuse, which may be physical or psychological.

The above constitutes only a partial list. There are other causes eg Lack of thorough police investigation, biased news reporting, judges favouring the prosecution, destruction of evidence. So, who benefits from this travesty of justice? The police, DEA, FBI, Immigration, prison guards, construction workers, prison food and canteen suppliers, lawyers, judges, courtroom personnel, power companies, investigators, expert witnesses, airlines, motor vehicle department, telephone companies, to name a few….Money talks!

Does anyone care? Believe it or not, some people DO care. Various organizations have been formed to attempt to extract falsely accused persons from prison. The Innocence Project, IIPPI, Truth in Justice etc. You should also care because there is a very fair possibility that this will happen to you.